I have dozens, scribbled in my notebook and recorded in screenshots, across just the handful of hours I’ve spent with it so far. Wildermyth is a veritable factory for these kinds of stories. As the others settled into relaxing pasttimes and wistful new ventures in the years of peace the Gorgon’s demise earned us, Baladvia knew there was more on the horizon. She had seen the coming danger, and had been subject to it herself. But in her heart, there was now a deep-seated thirst for revenge. She might die on my watch.īaladvia physically recovered, as the rest of the squad sprung into action to save her. She was new to the party, and not as endeared to me as Anwell, my half-wolf Hunter Junythien, or my elemental Mystic Ullis, but she was part of my company, The Swan Order. So when Baladvia was reeled in by the Gorgon, to be used as a mouthpiece for some vague threat of a coming doom for the human race before having half her face turned to stone, I panicked. She was the headstrong counterpart to my other Warrior, Anwell, and the two developed a chemistry as the hot-and-cold, sword-and-shield of my frontline through several battles. She was a new addition to the company: bright-eyed, ambitious, and eager to prove herself. Then, at the last second, it grabbed one of my Warriors, Baladvia. We faced off in a barn, in a town turned silent by the Gorgon’s stone gaze, and fell the beast alongside its many minions. In my first campaign, my band of merry adventurers had tracked down the source of a Gorgon infestation, led by a genuine, in the blue-flesh Gorgon. It might be easiest for me to explain the appeal of Wildermyth through an anecdote. The story feeds into the battles, and those battles feed back into the story, in ways that hooked me in and kept me playing until I declared aloud (on Twitter) “oh shit it’s 3 a.m.” Time has to be managed, and battles take place on a field familiar to anyone who’s spent some time with XCOM, only with fantasy weapons and monsters. They fail, fall in battle, and the years take their toll. You start out with an idealistic band of adventurers, hoping to make their mark on the world, and maybe save it in the process.Īnd then party members journey, bond, and build. Just as other games have used them to create their own narratives, Wildermyth uses procedural systems to tell its story, generating different paths from the hooks your characters have, either by choice or through randomization. It takes some clear inspiration from tabletop role-playing games, except-at least in single-player mode-you play the whole party. It’s got enough familiarity to its tactical combat and strategy meta-layer that it might be easier to fall back on the “X by way of Y” method of game description. It has a number of systems, all interlocking and affecting one another on various degrees. Wildermyth can be a tough game to describe. Losing sleep to weave the legacy of generations Looking for some more hidden gems? Check out our list of new indie games 2021. It's a truly special bit of design and one that puts my own Dungeon Mastering skills to shame. Wildermyth captures all of those - from the most throwaway remarks to the most reality-bending alteration of the self - just as effectively as any great tabletop-inspired CRPG, creating a party of characters that feel like they belong to you, but that change and grow organically, somehow seeming to own their own stories even while you play out the game on their behalf. Instead, it's any number of tiny interactions spread throughout a campaign that might last years, both in fiction and in real life. In my experience of tabletop games, it's rarely the climactic fight with the big bad that shapes a player's idea of their character. These events can provide a serious boon when it comes to etching your name in the annals of eternity, but they're also what truly shapes Wildermyth's most successful role-playing elements.

The heart wildermyth